Now, we have been in Madagascar for about 6 days. The other MadYAGMs and I flew into Antananarivo a day late because of a missed connection in Johannesburg, but all was well. After loading two cars, including the roofs, with all people and all of our baggage, we drove to a conference center that is run partially by the Malagasy Lutheran Church (FLM) and partially by Norwegian Missionaries. The center is about 4 hours from the capital where we flew into. Over the days, we have had 20 hours of Malagasy class, which has resulted in a lot of notes and not so much actually stuck in our heads, but that will come with time. We have also been to FLM church. On our first morning here, we decided to dive right in and go to church, the service was short, only about 2 hours long, and we didn't understand a word, but we did our best to follow along with our hymn books and English translations of the liturgy. We have also eaten lots of rice, fresh fruit, and some Malagasy street food; we have received more information about our sites (I will write more about that when I arrive there, don't worry!) and we went on a hike to the top of a very large hill. During this time, I have gotten a very small picture of what Madagascar looks like.
Someone asked me the other day, what is the country like? This is a huge question. I can only speak to what I have seen in the last four days in the town that I am in from the perspective of a vazaha (foreigner).
There is beautiful land here, on the way from the capital to where we are staying now, we got to see the countryside, and the land is beautiful. There are also beautiful people, even with more extreme poverty than I have seen before. Even though there doesn't seem to be enough money or other things to go around, there is always love.
Learning Malagasy is hard. We have definitely made progress, and our teacher is wonderful but outside of class everyone speaks so fast! Another volunteer and I went to a bookstore to buy English - Malagasy dictionaries today, we succeeded, but hand motions and our knowledge of French was definitely more helpful than our Malagasy.
The Malagasy people are so patient. We keep hearing this from our coordinators, but, today at the bookstore it was made more clear. The workers could tell that we aren't Malagasy, so we were greeted in French, "Bonjour!" We replied with the Malagasy, "salama!" And the worker smiled, she was so happy we were trying and worked with us to make sure the got the dictionary we needed. Or, tonight when our country coordinators sent us out for dinner to use our Malagasy language skills, the staff knew great English, but they asked us if we are learning Malagasy and helped us practice our skills and correct us as we went.
The fruit is great, no fruit bought in the United States will ever taste good again. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but we will have to see.
The architecture and streets have French origins. There is little infrastructure on the streets here around the conference center, but, the gutters, roads and sidewalks that are still here look very French.
Traffic is chaotic. The roads here are much less busy than in the capital, but between buses, bikes, pedestrians, cars, and pus-pus (they are like carts that the drivers can pull people in), there is a lot happening. There are a lot of potholes to avoid. Pedestrians do not have the right of way. Walking to Malgasy class each day is an adventure.
I cannot speak for this country, I can speak to what I know. I cannot judge what Malagasy do, because I am not Malagasy. I can love, walk next to, and learn from the Malagasy.
